Sol Polito - Writer

Cinematographer.
Nationality:
American.
Born:
Palermo, Sicily, 1892; emigrated to New York at an early age.
Education:
Attended schools in New York.
Career:
Still photographer, then laboratory and camera assistant;
1917—first film as cinematographer,
Queen X
; worked for several studios, then for Warner Brothers in 1930s and 1940s.
Died:
In 1960.

Girl of the Golden West
(Dillon);
Playing Around
(LeRoy);
No, No Nanette
(Badger);
Show Girl in Hollywood
(LeRoy);
Numbered Men
(LeRoy);
The Widow from Chicago
(Cline);
Madonna of the Streets
(Robertson)

Publications

On POLITO: book—

On POLITO: articles—

Film Comment
(New York), Summer 1972.

Focus on Film
(London), no. 13, 1973.

Reid, J.H., and G. Aachen, "
Captains of the Clouds
," in
Reid's Film Index
(Wyong, New South Wales), no. 24, 1996.

* * *

Like most of the technicians who created collectively, if
unselfconsciously, what is now known as the "classic Hollywood
style," Sol Polito received little formal training in his craft,
but instead learned the intricacies of cinematography on the job, first as
an assistant during a three-year apprenticeship and then as head
cameraman. If Polito was hardly an artist whose innovations inspired
others, even as he broke with established practices, he was something much
more valuable in the factory system of film production that emerged with
the vertical integration of the studios in the twenties and the incredible
expansion of the medium: a craftsman with a deep and abiding interest in a
job well-done who was eager to create the best possible product by
following industry guidelines even as he perfected their application.

The studio system in general suited Polito's temperament and work
ethic; it is no accident that he thrived in the rather authoritarian
setting of Warner Brothers, where studio head Jack Warner was notorious
for demanding efficiency, competence, and fiscal responsibility (meaning,
of course, no extra expense that did not justify itself in the finished
product). As a studio technician, Polito found it necessary to work on a
wide variety of projects in the different genres Warners then specialized
in, most particularly what may be best described as the crime
melodrama—gritty, hard-hitting pictures often based on events taken
directly from yesterday's headlines. For these films, Polito and
the other chief cinematographer at Warners, Tony Gaudio, devised an
unglamorized look, not softened by flattering lighting effects, that made
much use of the chiaroscuro contrasts between dark and light that were a
heritage of German Expressionism. This style is the ancestor of the film
noir cinematography that emerged to popularity in the late forties, an
evolution based to some degree on technical advances (e.g., faster film
stock and deep focus techniques) and a more thoroughgoing interest in
realism promoted by wartime filmmaking and postwar developments abroad.
Polito's work for the classic Warners crime melodrama
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
, however, bears comparison with that later style in its outstanding,
expressive effects—most memorably, an overall somberness to which
director Mervyn LeRoy's effective staging certainly contributed.
Interestingly, though film noir evolved during the last decade of
Polito's work at Warners and the studio was itself in the forefront
of this thematic and stylistic innovation (the 1941 Warners version of
The Maltese Falcon
is often regarded as the most important early noir film), Polito was not
centrally involved, as other cinematographers of his generation, such as
John Alton, were. Nevertheless, he ceated for Anatole Litvak's
classic noir melodrama
Sorry, Wrong Number
a washed-out, hazy look that fails to define clearly much of what is in
the frame, a perfect correlative for this story of moral ambivalence,
failure of character, infantile preoccupations, and anomie. In this film,
Polito's lighting and exposure values deprive the upscale home of
the invalid main character of any sense of richness or security. How
different an inflection he gives to the same tonality of grays by making
the lighting scheme more glamorizing, emphasizing soft focus in close-ups
of star Bette Davis, in
Now, Voyager
, the classic forties melodrama in which the world of the rich is offered
as exquisitely textured, the realm for the setting of the purest romantic
fantasy. Neither film makes use of the hard contrast between white and
black for which Warners became famous in the thirties, and thus each
exemplifies the flexibility within a dominant studio style.

Polito, however, like any studio technician, did not enjoy the luxury of
working simply in one genre and perfecting his handling of nuance within
overall expressive requirements. His action photography for the
studio's specialist in swashbuckling epics, Michael Curtiz, is
excellent in another way.
The Adventures of Robin Hood
, in particular, shows how Polito could impart a highly effective glow to
a Technicolor film, a medium then rather difficult to handle well.
Polito's lighting and exposure values create a depth and crispness
that are entirely appropriate to the story. Working with the
studio's new tank and fog machines in the similar project
The Sea Hawk
, Polito is able to inflect this tale of maritime adventure with the
appropriate atmospherics, a misty, often smoky look pervades the action
sequences in a story that is darker and more brooding than the moral
simplicity of the children's fable of the defeat of the evil King
John by Robin Hood. Polito's other black-and-white work for Curtiz
is exemplary, particularly in
The Charge of the Light Brigade
where his clear images and unusual setups perfectly complement the
director's fascination with exciting action.

—R. Barton Palmer

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